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Slowing growth, crushing debts, aging populations, anti-social behavior — what exactly is amiss with Western civilization? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, is that our institutions are degenerating and that to slow the degeneration of the West’s once dominant civilization will take heroic leadership and radical reform.

SPEAKER BIOS

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and the author of many books, including The Great Degeneration.

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Joseph J. Ellis and Stacy Schiff examine a crescendo moment in American history: the summer of 1776. The summer represented the most dramatic few months in the story of our country’s founding, when the thirteen colonies came together and agreed to secede from the British Empire while Britain dispatched the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic.

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In the twenty-first century, the world seems in constant crisis. In his new book, Richard N. Haass argues that only by getting its own house in order can the United States reclaim its role as the primary director of global events and maintain that role in a world of unprecedented chaos.

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Join us for a conversation between Bob Herbert and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison about her latest novel, Home. The book tells the story of Frank Money, an angry veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just physical scars.

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Celebrated historian David Nasaw returns to continue his discussion of Joseph P. Kennedy, the patriarch of America’s greatest political dynasty. In part two, Professor Nasaw focuses on Kennedy’s relationship with his son John F. Kennedy, who resurrected the family’s political reputation and captured the imagination of a generation.

SPEAKER BIOS

David Nasaw is a professor of history at the CUNY Graduate Center and the author of The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Harry Belafonte will no longer deliver opening remarks.

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In 1955, on the first night of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, an untested, 26-year-old Baptist pastor made an impromptu speech that catapulted him into the public consciousness as one of the faces of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.

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John Rogers, known as “the people’s sculptor,” was a pioneer of widely accessible art in the nineteenth century. Exploring themes ranging from the Civil War to domestic life to familiar theater and literary references, Rogers was the forerunner of populist artists of the twentieth century, especially Norman Rockwell. Three experts compare these two titans of popular art—along with other popular artists, including Andy Warhol—and discuss why their work was so resonant with the American public.

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Long before Abraham Lincoln penned the Emancipation Proclamation, opponents of slavery employed every available literary form — from essays and plays to sermons and hymns — to wage a heroic battle. An expert panel reflects on the pioneering writers and thinkers, from the eighteenth century through Emancipation, who challenged social norms and whose revolutionary ideas helped overthrow a poisonous national institution.